NEWS OF 150 YEARS AGO
October 1862
From The Missouri Democrat, Saturday, October 4, 1862.
PEACE PROPOSITIONS.
Numerous rumors and statements have been circulating through the public journals for some days past, without any well known or recognized paternity, having reference to proposals for settlement, supposed to have been made by the rebels. Of course, as the proposals come from them, they must signify a willingness, upon certain conditions, to return to their original allegiance. We have considered this entire matter so utterly the work of imagination that we have not heretofore deemed it worthy of notice. Following immediately upon the heels of the President’s emancipation proclamation, we can trace a motive for the originating of stories of this description, in the desire of the opponents of the new policy to show an absence of necessity for the measure, and in that way help to create an impression against it. Such stories, too, are well calculated to awaken some little sympathy for the rebels, and accompanied as they usually are, in the columns of conservative journals, with appeals and assurances to “our misguided brethren,” that, if they will only return in peace, all past will be forgiven them, it is not difficult to discover at least an extreme satisfaction in speculating upon them.
We have no faith in peaceable adjustments yet. Swords and bayonets and cannon are, we fear, to be the only peace-makers for a while longer. If peace proposals have come from the rebels, they were not induced by Lincoln’s proclamation. We had all the intelligence we yet have respecting them, before the proclamation could have reached Richmond. Nor can we yet presume that the rebel authorities are quite ready to get upon their knees to their most hated and long repudiated antagonist, especially after what they regard as a succession of magnificent successes. Even the late battles in Maryland are treated as victories by the Richmond press, and the retrograde movement of Lee and his horde is spoken of as purely strategic. That the people of the Confederate States are in a condition to embrace peace with open arms, is undeniable, provided they had reason to believe there existed any real necessity for seeking it. What we now need to bring peace, is such a victory as the rebels must acknowledge to be a defeat.